Word: flibbertigibbets
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Died. ZaSu Pitts, 63, Hollywood's flibbertigibbet comedienne, a Kansas girl who was a rising tragedienne until the talkies came along and no one could take her quavering, squeaky voice seriously, then adroitly turned to hilarious roles, from the whimpering Western maid in Ruggles of Red Gap to the befuddled switchboard operator of the forthcoming It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World; of cancer; in Hollywood...
...mumbles something about saving the heroine from herself, but her principal function is obviously to rescue Faulkner from the moiling unmotivated mess of his plot. Actresses Remick and Odetta sometimes polarize the disorder with a powerful, paradoxical image of salvation: the black earth-mother hanged on a flimsy white flibbertigibbet. But on the whole, Producer Richard (son of Darryl) Zanuck's attempt to clean up Faulkner for the family seems a bit like trying to smear the whole of Yoknapatawpha County with underarm deodorant. It might just possibly be done, but it sure does seem a peculiar thing...
...Victoria. This easy informality and Frederika's gift for bowling over generals, sergeants and congressmen alike has proved a major asset to a ruling house whose royal motto is: "My power is in the love of the people." But Greece's Queen is no royal flibbertigibbet. Born to the purple as well as being married to it, she takes what she calls "this King business" with deadly seriousness, and exploits every ounce of her charm and wit to strengthen its power...
Menagerie is the reminiscence of a merchant seaman (Arthur Kennedy) about his life with mother (Gertrude Lawrence) and sister (Jane Wyman) in a shabby St. Louis flat across the alley from a dance hall. Mother, a onetime Southern belle long ago deserted by her husband, is a flibbertigibbet who clings to her airs of gentility, her magnolia-scented memories and a fierce desire to find a husband for her crippled, pathologically shy daughter...
...performances range from good through ragged to corny. Carnegie Hall's makers evidently tried hard not to mangle, and they recorded considerable stretches of the music, rather than cinema's customary flibbertigibbet tatters. Even so, two hours of this kind of frenzied anthologizing, however well meant, are exhausting. It is often said in defense of such musical popularization that it serves to interest many people in good music who might never otherwise learn to care for it. It might also be suggested that the effort could frighten many potential music lovers away...